Ambiance & Power
by The Other Girl
Summary: The women of the Fire Nation Royal Family tell their stories. Listening has always been optional.


The women of the Fire Nation Royal Family are forged in flames, they say. Sharp as steel and warm like wine.

No one ever asks why.

Homura is brought to the palace when she is fourteen. Her family never understood why their farm did not suffice. She is stupid in ways only life can kick out of her- she dreams men will give her jewels. She dreams they will give her silks to rest on and dragonhide to wear just for the virtue of being lovely.

She is nothing but a little child lighting matches and throwing them at the dark. When the things lurking in the dark notice her she can only run. Her hands feel poor and no one wants to be touched by them.

The men discard her easily at first. The women glare as they hold their husbands closer. In the end she has to take all the things she dreams of with nimble fingers and a quick wit. She learns to smile wide while speaking the necessary lies. She learns to carry a knife when she walks the world at night.

She is already thirty when he asks for her; the Fire Lord is old as sin it seems. The battlefield of his life has added deep lines to a once handsome face. Homura kisses each one but she can see him for what he is and bites hard when the time comes. She pleases him. Homura holds the Conquering King of her country, his body shudders over her, listens as he talks and plans his sprawling dreams.

His weakness disgusts her but his crown shines. It is not long before he asks for her again. And again.

There is no official marriage but the child she forges from their union is declared legitimate despite. She lets him name it. Sons are power, she knows that much, but she wants the Sun itself and the creature at her breast cries too much to contemplate. Homura is in turn allowed to stay in the Royal Chambers. She is victorious; when he takes her out amongst the people she is perfumed and burnished and splendid against the roar of the rabble below.

He never takes her into his meetings but she reads the documents on his desk and signs them when he sleeps. It is a dangerous game but she's winning.

The only thing left to have is dragonhide. She is older now with power to spare and she _wants_ it. Her Lord spends too much time atop his steed. She lights the fire.

The else-proclaimed Whore Queen laughs when the ashes smear on her lips and brings down the blade. Her Lord will thank her for the idea.

It is the start of a new age.

* * *

Her mother is aged when she is born and her father is someone else. At ten Alioth calculates it— given the timing of it all she and her father are now two months apart in age.

But then she is twelve and the sky burns bright with the light of a comet, and her father will never be anyone ever again. Mother stands outside their house with her arms outstretched as if he will fall from the sky. As if she would recognize him if he did.

Ali learns to hate the color red. She feels the fire itching under her skin and pushes it back again to shift the marrow of her bones into new shapes. She will not bend for the element that took her fathers life. They would have her on her hands and knees waiting for the hint of a spark if they could. It is not the life for her.

There is a calm almost— until the royal guards come to the house and drag her to court. She is prepared for every torture but the pretense of kindness that oozes like poison from the walls. Fire Lord Sozin is still at War, bodies do not burn themselves, but his Lady kisses Ali on the cheek and takes her to the royal gardens where everything grows green. Lady Homura doesn't mention her father. Not even once. Ali follows where she leads and does not ask for her mother.

She knows better than that.

They talk of clothing and boys and Lady Homura smiles at her. "Would you like to be married someday?"

"I don't know," Ali says. "I don't have many, um, options." And there's that touch of resentment that her country has been watering and waiting to petal, growing strong as the trees around them.

They put her to work taking care of the Prince Azulon with the sharp teeth. She sleeps in the servants quarters, and stays up late singing lullabies about leaves on the vine, and cares for a child whose spirit is destined to run _redredred_ with blood because there's nothing else to do and and—

And she wants her _Daddy_. She doesn't care if he's old and bearded with stories of the past or young and bald with visions of the future but she needs him with the force of a sudden blow. But no one is coming for the child of a dead Traitor. They want the Avatar and she is just the part leftover. A story no one wants to hear.

When she is sixteen the Fire Lord asks for a private meeting and she complies. He talks of her father and his breath smells of sulfur as he speaks of— of so many things to justify so much more that she can't speak. She lets him take her breath away. Ali locks it all in the corners of her mind where they can't touch her; she will not bend or break. She is the daughter of the Avatar. If fire is the element of power than she is the weakness they cannot see. She will endure all things.

Ali dreams of fire the color of ice. She dreams that Fang comes to take her away and they stay up in the clouds where no one can find them. She dreams of the flames that sit inside her soul and what it will take to let them out. They'll have to burn _blue_ and bright far away from here.

Someday.

* * *

Into adolescence and adulthood, Ilah carries the chubby cheeks that all but scream innocence even when she is smiling with appraising baby shark teeth. She giggles when there is nothing to laugh at. They call her a silly little girl and they don't see her when she floats into the throne room.

The Dowager Lady _(the Whore Queen ruling still) _dislikes her immediately. Fat little girls have no place in politics, she says. Fire Lord Azulon stares at them both with the critical eye of his father but does not speak.

"The Fire Lord promised me to you," Ilah says, keeping her own eyes down at the polished floor. "I have nothing to fear."

She leaves without asking permission and sits outside his bedchambers with her pipa and her tea. Ilah is eighteen and impatient but with her fingers kept busy she can keep the illusion of control. If she does it for long enough he might mistake it for the real thing.

Azulon sits beside her on the stone floor and says nothing. She knows her father, her mother, her brothers, have all pled her case in tiny discreet ways to ruin his day but still he doesn't quite see her. Ilah, at a loss, sings to him scattered fragments of nothing in particular. She tries to make it seem charming.

He agrees to marry her the next week. Ilah smiles at him with all the sincerity she intends until he can't help but smile her smile. In this moment she is the most powerful woman in the nation.

Her Lord husband is gone for months at a time with his battles and bravery so it falls on Ilah to handle the day-to-day matters of the Nation. Homura fights her at every turn but Illah makes friends where Homura makes enemies. She drinks more now in her age, though she is still young enough to make men stare, and her plans have started to lack subtlety. If only she were still spreading her legs it would be easier, Ilah could have her revenge by parading her Mother-In-Law about as a traitor to the memory of her husband. But it seems that Homura only enjoys power in the end.

Ilah wonders what that is like. She has had so many men _(Azulon is always gone) _and she needs them all in the same way she needs songs and ceremony. She is the Lady of her country and she is slowly learning to give to Azulon and take from the rest.

Homura whines about some nursemaid running off to be married, about the quality of Ilah's tea, about Ilah's hair.

There is nothing wrong with her hair but the tea develops an odd aftertaste. The Dowager Lady dies young. Ilah keeps her face hidden behind a white fan at the funeral and comforts her husband.

She has his son almost nine months do the day after and laughs and laughs and laughs. Her Iroh. Her little boy sticks to her side and sees the world with wide eyes.

"He looks like you," says Azulon. It's true; her future Fire Lord with be short, round, and small just like his Mother. He'll be strong and brave in all things like his Father. Azulon kisses them both affectionately. His arms are full of papers, official documents of little rebellions from a petty Kingdom, Ilah wishes she could show those little generals her son. They'd see the glory of her country then.

"You," she said to her baby boy. "Are going to be so interesting. I promise you that."

Life moves forward for the Mother behind the throne.

* * *

When Lián is seven her sister is promised to the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation. The older girl with eyes that caught sparks was born to be a Lady. Their father the General beams and bounces on the souls of his feet like dancers must have once. Lián is only a fragment of the day, not the sun but the light reflected from it, and when she wanders off no one looks very hard. Little girl with nimble fingers goes where she pleases.

She plays Pai Sho with an elderly woman in a back room of the palace and listens to stories of heroes in far away lands. The world moves forward, her generation begins to grow into its skin, and Lián learns the stories are true. She presses the Lotus Tile into her palm.

Her talents are few but she has the records of her father's activities and her sister's love for royalty. She has a whip to curl around her enemies when she runs from the coils of boarding school. They find ways for her to be useful and still go home again. A message here could stop a city from burning. A correctly placed jab can keep a war going. Her parents mutter excuses on her behalf without knowing the full story themselves. She is a happy disappointment to all who know her.

_(Her first love only kisses her once. She was an Earth Kingdom girl, trading information to and from the agents of their cause, whose fingers were rough as they brushed against her cheek. There were other places Lián needed to go. She was still a child then; she assumed there'd be other chances. But when the smoke clears only the Fire Nation stands.)_

A prince is born when the Lady of the Fire Nation dies. Lián is noble enough in nature to bow her head at the news and pretend to be surprised. Her future mother-in-law was old enough for grandchildren. Her motives were her own but there was no surprise in the outcome.

When her sister dies a week later _(an accident, they say, and Lián wonders if she ever knew the girl at all)_ her fingernails dig into skin and she cries for days. A new plan is made from the ashes of the old.

It is difficult to plot treason when you're arranged to marry the Crown Prince. Lián makes plans despite. She plays Pai Sho in the Market Place, each tile a tiny tempest, until they drag her from the board and she sobs off to the side. It is suggested to her that she could still be useful— but not in her condition. Quickly, as quickly as walking from one room to the next, her contacts see only the risks of a crown and fade back into the shadows she can't find. The man who is to be her husband doesn't come to call on her. She doesn't expect him to.

Eventually their parents make arrangements for them to meet. Lián imagines the Fire Lord, a man who could sink his teeth into the world, holding the new princeling as he waves his son forward. It's a silly thought. She pities the new child in a distant way.

Iroh, Crown Prince that he is, already has lines starting to form on his face from the battles he's fought and the lives he lost. They take his boat out for the day; her hat blows into the water, and although he won't dive into the water to rescue it, he promises he'll buy her a new one. She seems to be all things inconsequential when he looks at her. If it bothers him he never says.

She'll never be molded the way he thinks he likes, but Lián knows how to play games and listen to his stories. She doesn't poison him or ravish him. Iroh never asks her about where she went wandering in the old world she lived in. Cities burn and she can't stop them.

Their son never sees her either.

_(One day, when she's long gone and he's stooped with age, Iroh will find the things which once defined her replacement wife. He'll laugh even. He won't know why.)_

When Lián leaves the world it will by her own free will. One last rebellion. A message to no one but herself.

* * *

Happy children are rare in the Fire Nation Court but Ursa does her best. Boys give her flowers and her family gives her to a prince. She had not realized she was a prize.

Ursa is just enough younger than the second born to only coo when smoke rises from his throat. Ozai introduces himself with long formal bows and grand whispered plans. She nods her head at both when he pulls her close to feel her pulse point. She pretends it is a romantic gesture.

"Your brother will inherit," she shivers despite herself. "There's nothing you can do."

Ozai shakes his head and smiles. "We'll see."

They would.

His father hates her. His brother is kind but distant. She is alone until her Zuko is born, followed quickly by her Azula, and she convinces herself that this will be enough.

She never quite realized the power inherent in royalty. Every extra layer of silk added to her body seemed more to hold her tight rather than help her reign within. It is in motherhood that Ursa finds her strength. Power for powers sake makes her think of volcano ash and unhappy endings but sacrifice—

Ursa loves her children. When the time comes to choose it is not a choice at all.

It is not until she is far away that Ursa realizes that she was never happy in that place. The opportunity for it had faded with her flowers.

She wonders what her children will be when she sees them next.

* * *

Azula does not stand behind the throne. She stands in front and in the end she sits where her father was before.

No one sits beside her but the women who gave her the fire in her lungs flicker in the shadows.

They were all waiting for the little girl with blue flames and dragon eyes.

* * *

Mai does not see them.

Mai moves past them and does as she likes.

No prison can hold her anymore.


End file.
